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[Most??] moving lines of acceptance or tolerance?

Naphtali

Naphtali

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Movies, perhaps more powerfully than books, can deliver messages of acceptance and tolerance more efficiently than any government statute. I anticipate they can also be heavy-handed and ridiculously preachy. What are the subtle, effective lines?

In books - please, the only example - one of the most moving lines occurs in Huckleberry Finn when Huck decides to help the slave Jim, saying, "Alright, I'll go to Hell."

1. In "Witness" (1985 - Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis), near the beginning of the movie, Jan Rubes, the grandfather, says to McGillis as she and her son leave for Baltimore, "You be careful out among them English." At the end of the movie, as Harrison Ford is leaving his farm, Rubes repeats the lines to, and for, Ford.
***
2. In "Sweet Home, Alabama" (2002 - Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas), the night following Witherspoon's drunken exposing of the group's long-time friend, Ethan Embry, as a homosexual - in a redneck bar in Alabama! - Lucas says to Embry, and the group of friends now shunning Embry: [paraphrased] Are you the same guy you were yesterday?

[Reply] Yes.

[Puts his arm around Embry, in friendly fashion] Then have a beer.

And the spell, the shunning ends. Just like that.
 
LizzieMaine

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I'm very fond of an obscure Universal drama from 1951 called "Bright Victory," the story of a WW2 vet, a white Southerner, who was blinded in combat, and who befriends another blinded vet while in a rehab hospital. Until the moment when the Southerner drops the "N-word" in a conversation -- and one of the other vets tells him that his friend is black. "Maybe he thought you were colored, too," he adds.

This whole exchange shatters the Southerner's whole worldview and forces him to reevaluate everything he's been raised to believe about race -- and at the end, after he tells off his parents for their own bigotry, the two are reconciled. It's a very sensitively-done picture, and the performances are outstanding. Never available on DVD or VHS, but it does show up occasionally on TCM.
 
Naphtali

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Widebrim said:
Good thread, but let's keep in mind that acceptance and tolerance are not always the same thing. I can tolerate a person's behaviour without necessarily apporoving of it. Just a clarification. :)
Click to expand...
Absolutely. That's why I diffferentiated between them. The "get started" examples are of each, "Witness" being acceptance, "Sweet Home, Alabama" being tolerance.
 
Carlisle Blues

Carlisle Blues

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Billy Jack (1971)

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference. (Reinhold Niebuhr)
 
Carlisle Blues

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Nirgendwo in Afrika (2001)

"Tolerance doesn't mean that everyone is the same. That'd be stupid. What I've learned here is how valuable differences are. Differences are good. And intelligent people will never hold it against you."

24FC2D66175243328066F7EA13D2B6BB_Nirgendwo_in_Afrika_Plakat.jpg
 
MikeKardec

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LizzieMaine said:
I'm very fond of an obscure Universal drama from 1951 called "Bright Victory," the story of a WW2 vet, a white Southerner, who was blinded in combat, and who befriends another blinded vet while in a rehab hospital. Until the moment when the Southerner drops the "N-word" in a conversation -- and one of the other vets tells him that his friend is black. "Maybe he thought you were colored, too," he adds.
Click to expand...

Slightly off the topic of movies but there's an issue I mentioned elsewhere that bears repeating here because of Lizzie's memory of this great moment: Robert Heinlein has in more recent years been reviled as being "right wing" ... in reality his writing seems a good deal more complicated. He used to do a version of this scene, yet in his case it was played against his audience. He would start a novel, get his Young Adult audience deeply engaged with the protagonist, and then, half way though, describe the hero as being ... well, let's call them "non-white" because, as I remember he experimented with all kinds, including Maori. Some of his point may have been that racial expectations in his prospective future were unlikely to be the same as at the time of his writing. Some was probably just devilishness. But it was a good learning experience for many a mid century kid.

On a similar topic, Glory Road comes across as highly sexist ... until you realize (Spoiler Alert) it's theme is really about what it would be to be a 1950s model of heroic masculinity trapped in a relationship with a woman who is older, wiser, and more powerful than you by far. Typical of that era, Heinlein's work was written quickly and just for fun but he did play with some interesting ideas and helped set Science Fiction off an a course where it explored the social implications of various futures as opposed to simply the technical ones.

In an odd turn, Stranger in a Strange Land may have been written to lampoon certain trends he saw developing in the 1940-50s. But it either helped create or predict a great deal of the counter culture of the 1960s. He was an ODD duck ... but interesting.
 
LizzieMaine

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EC Comics did a variation of that same racial theme in a story called "Judgement Day," pulished in 1954. The story dealt with a human astronaut assigned by a Federation-like planetary council to visit a prospective member planet and determine whether that planet was suitable for membership. He discovered that the inhabitants were segregated into "red" and "blue" races, and after observing the discrimination that resulted, he concluded that the planet was not accptable for membership in the council. And then he got back into his ship and took off his helmet...

EC_Judgementday.jpg


The Comics Code Authority rejected the story on the basis of this one panel. Publisher William Gaines called the Code administrator, argued his point, and concluded with, in the context of the time, two very courageous words: "F*** you." And then published the story anyway. It was the last conventional comic book EC ever issued.
 
Fading Fast

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MikeKardec said:
Slightly off the topic of movies but there's an issue I mentioned elsewhere that bears repeating here because of Lizzie's memory of this great moment: Robert Heinlein has in more recent years been reviled as being "right wing" ... in reality his writing seems a good deal more complicated. He used to do a version of this scene, yet in his case it was played against his audience. He would start a novel, get his Young Adult audience deeply engaged with the protagonist, and then, half way though, describe the hero as being ... well, let's call them "non-white" because, as I remember he experimented with all kinds, including Maori. Some of his point may have been that racial expectations in his prospective future were unlikely to be the same as at the time of his writing. Some was probably just devilishness. But it was a good learning experience for many a mid century kid.

On a similar topic, Glory Road comes across as highly sexist ... until you realize (Spoiler Alert) it's theme is really about what it would be to be a 1950s model of heroic masculinity trapped in a relationship with a woman who is older, wiser, and more powerful than you by far. Typical of that era, Heinlein's work was written quickly and just for fun but he did play with some interesting ideas and helped set Science Fiction off an a course where it explored the social implications of various futures as opposed to simply the technical ones.

In an odd turn, Stranger in a Strange Land may have been written to lampoon certain trends he saw developing in the 1940-50s. But it either helped create or predict a great deal of the counter culture of the 1960s. He was an ODD duck ... but interesting.
Click to expand...

LizzieMaine said:
EC Comics did a variation of that same racial theme in a story called "Judgement Day," pulished in 1954. The story dealt with a human astronaut assigned by a Federation-like planetary council to visit a prospective member planet and determine whether that planet was suitable for membership. He discovered that the inhabitants were segregated into "red" and "blue" races, and after observing the discrimination that resulted, he concluded that the planet was not accptable for membership in the council. And then he got back into his ship and took off his helmet...

View attachment 324032

The Comics Code Authority rejected the story on the basis of this one panel. Publisher William Gaines called the Code administrator, argued his point, and concluded with, in the context of the time, two very courageous words: "F*** you." And then published the story anyway. It was the last conventional comic book EC ever issued.
Click to expand...

My first introduction to that "switch" was, as a young kid, seeing the famous "Star Trek" episode with the half-black-half-white face people. It's an amazingly powerful way to show the concept.
 
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LizzieMaine

LizzieMaine

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That episode gets a lot of razzing these days for being heavy handed, but in 1968 a heavy hand was exactly what was needed. And Frank Gorshin's character was absolutely chilling in the matter-of-fact way he explained his views. "Are you *blind,* Mr. Spock? Loki's people are white on the right side. All Loki's people are white...on the right side." Change the words a bit, and you can find similar sentiments expressed all over certain social media platforms today.
 
Fading Fast

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LizzieMaine said:
That episode gets a lot of razzing these days for being heavy handed, but in 1968 a heavy hand was exactly what was needed. And Frank Gorshin's character was absolutely chilling in the matter-of-fact way he explained his views. "Are you *blind,* Mr. Spock? Loki's people are white on the right side. All Loki's people are white...on the right side." Change the words a bit, and you can find similar sentiments expressed all over certain social media platforms today.
Click to expand...

It's got to be, at least, forty five years ago when I first saw it and I can still remember the impact it had on me. So, yes, heavy handed was good.
 
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